SC LENDS benefits patrons by giving them access to more materials than ever before. Together, SC LENDS libraries serve the population of almost half of the state’s counties and has a collection of more than 2.75 million items.

The smallest member of SC LENDS went from having a collection of less than 40,000 items to more than 2.75 million.

As of March 2014, SC LENDS libraries have loaned items to patrons in South Carolina more than 19 million times. The average cost of a book on Amazon.com is $9. That is a value of over $171 million dollars. The real value is even higher since many of these are more expensive non-fiction books, videos and audio books. This is not deferred costs since not all materials would have been bought but it is value to the local libraries.

Using SC’s Inter-Agency Mail Service allows us to loan materials from the furthest points in the state usually within 48 hours at 1/6th the cost of buying the item or less. This also supports the IMS, which is critical to many state departments.

Libraries have been able to loan more than 750,000 items between counties facilitated by SC LENDS at a value of more than $6.8 million at less than 1/7th the cost.

Our savings allow our libraries to put even more focus on providing reference, story times, Internet access, job searching and many more critical community services.

SC LENDS libraries share a single catalog, which means that patrons can search for items at any of the libraries as easily as they search for items at their home library.

Requesting items is as simple as clicking a button. Within a few days, any available circulating item can be delivered from any SC LENDS library across the state.

SC LENDS benefits libraries by helping them take advantage of economies of scale and share expertise with other libraries around the state.

SC LENDS libraries are implementing the Evergreen open-source integrated library system (ILS). By using open source and a shared hosted platform, SC LENDS libraries save more than $300,000 a year in costs.